Norfolk Arena normally plays host to muddier pursuits like stock car and speedway racing. It seems like an unusual place for drifting but for such a small venue it has good basic facilities, coupled with the fact it's far out in the middle of nowhere away from any fuds who would complain about the noise, which makes this a very drift friendly venue. A small basic track is set out on the tarmac inside the oval dirt track, very different to the other tracks in the series as it is a tight, dusty and relatively low speed course.
By no means is that a bad thing though as it gets the drivers to pull some different skills out of the bag. This track is all about momentum and avoiding understeer on the dusty surface. Too much wand will have you grinding to a halt and there's no time or space to rely on power-over alone to get you out of trouble. Frankly it's perfect for a smaller, lighter, underpowered car like an AE86 and I was gutted that none were competing this weekend.
However! There were two cars.. small, old school and relatively underpowered and very much my cup of tea! They came in the shape of a Mark 2 Ford Escort and a KP Toyota Starlet. The Starlet had a 2.0 ltr Vauxhall XE under the bonnet and was putting in some super clean runs during qualifying.
This Escort was my favourite car there. It looked cool and understated as fuck.. had a decent amount of grunt from the YB under the bonnet and the driver was giving it the beans out on track. Loved it.
The atmosphere in the arena is pretty cool as the sun goes down and the flood lights come on.
I'm not sure how Matt managed to look so wasted in this picture..? He was doing the driving so hadn't touched a drop! LOL (spotted! elusive Moose sat to his his right)
Stacy was along for her second dose of drifting after her first with Matt at Prodrift in Ireland.
So the sun went down, bumpers were smashed, battles were won and the all dominating Japspeed cleaned up all the trophies. My action shots were a bit sketchy as I was shooting from the grandstand and our man Daniel didn't make it down so no hot shots from him I'm afraid. But I'm banking on a cool BDC video of the event from Brooksie being released in the next few days so we'll skip my sketchy photos and wait for that instead.
In the meantime.. Roll on Sunday!
With Moose off home to get back to the spanners and fixing his S13 we swapped him for Sweet Oblivion's oldest friend Mark Trotter. We'd not seen him in ages and I'd heard rumours of a mint 180sx he was rolling around in. So we set off in the morning to the agreed meet up point. As we approach we see not a 180 but a rather tidy looking S15 parked up. Mark is waiting with a bunch of friends.. must be one of theirs we figure.. So some quick hellos later we jump back in the cars and head off for the track.. still wondering where Mark's 180 is hidden.. but wait a minute.. what the.. he has the keys to the S15!? and he's bloody getting in it?! WTF!?!? Turns out only a few days previous he had found and wangled it for a frankly bargainous price. So we introduce to you, Mark "freshly flash git" Trotter..
The morning was fun, catching up with friends Mark, Sid and Chunk and with our arses parked back in the grandstand we were ready for another day of skids.
Enough from me I think! I'm gonna let Matt take it from here..
No comments:
Post a Comment